The core group of Liberty Circus are Malcolm Holcombe, Alan Kaufman, Al Maginnes, and RB Morris,: a rogue band of outlaw songwriters and poets who have thrown in to criss-cross the land in a performing celebration of good old democratic open-heartedness. All profits from the proceeds of our shows will directly benefit organizations working with immigrants and refugees. Along the way we’ll invite local performers to our stages and grow our Liberty Circus into a big national family of love and support for Lady Liberty’s tired, poor masses yearning to breathe free.

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Alan Kaufman is an American novelist, memoirist and poet who was instrumental in the development of the Spoken Word movement in literature.

Alan Kaufman’s novel Matches was published by Little, Brown and Company in the Fall of 2005, and was published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Robinson the following year.His memoir — Jew Boy — was published by Fromm International/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Foxrock Books, imprint of Grove Press publisher and founder Barney Rosset.

David Mamet has called Kaufman’s novel Matches “an extraordinary war novel,” and Dave Eggers has written that “there is more passion here than you see in twenty other books combined”. Ruth Prawer has praised Kaufman’s memoir, Jew Boy as “astonishing…a grand epic of a memoir”, while the San Francisco Chronicle called it a “classic coming of age story.”

Both books are published as well in the UK by Constable and Robinson.

Kaufman is the editor of the bestselling ‘The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Basic Books/Perseus). He is also co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature (Thunder’s Mouth Press), alongside Barney Rosset and Neil Ortenberg. His other books include The Outlaw Bible of American Essays (Thunder’s Mouth Press) and The New Generation: Fiction For Our Time From America’s Writing Programs(Anchor/Doubleday).

Kaufman has written for The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Salon, Evergreen Review, and numerous other publications.

He is Dean of The Free University of San Francisco and a co-founder Clayton Patterson of The Acker Awards, which are named after author Kathy Acker and given to authors and other artists in New York and San Francisco.

Kaufman’s newest memoir, Drunken Angel, was published in 2011 by Viva Editions/Cleis Press and will be released as a paperback in April, 2013. His memoir Jew Boy is being made into a film by Plug Ugly Films&Silent Five Productions.

Alan Kaufman’s most recent book is The Outlaw Bible of American Art (Last Gasp). He is currently a New York Public Library Affiliated Scholar.

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Al Maginnes was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1957 and grew up in a number of states, mostly in the southeast. He has worked as a mail clerk, a landscaper, an electrician, a carpenter’s helper, a hammock weaver, surveyor, and, since 1990, as a teacher. His full length collections are Taking Up Our Daily Tools (St. Andrews College Press, 1997), The Light In Our Houses (Pleaides Press, 2000), winner of the Lena-Myles Wever Todd Award, Film History (WordTech Editions, 2005) and Ghost Alphabet (White Pine Press, 2008), which won the 2007 White Pine Poetry Prize. He has also published four chapbooks, most recently Between States (Main Street Rag Press, 2010) and Greatest Hits 1987-2010 (Pudding House Publications, 2010). His poems and reviews have appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Tar River Poetry and many others. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife and daughter and teaches composition, literature and creative writing at Wake Technical Community College.

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RB Morris is a poet and songwriter, solo performer and band leader, and a sometimes playwright and actor from Knoxville, Tennessee. He has published books of poetry including Early Fires (Iris Press), Keeping The Bees Employed, and The Mockingbird Poems (Rich Mountain Bound), and music albums including Spies Lies and Burning Eyes, and his most recent solo project Rich Mountain Bound. He wrote and acted in The Man Who Lives Here Is Looney, a one-man play taken from the life and work of James Agee, and was instrumental in founding a park dedicated to Agee in Knoxville. Morris served as the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at The University of Tennessee from 2004-2008, and was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2009. He currently lives in Knoxville with his wife and daughter.

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Born and raised in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, Malcolm Holcombe is being recognized by the contemporary U.S and European folk/americana community as a performer of national stature, and an uncommonly unique guitarist/vocalist about whom Rolling Stone magazine says: “Haunted country, acoustic blues and rugged folk all meet [here]…”The acts of writing songs and playing music have always been hopeful ones, however bleak the subject matter of the songs might be. With Down the River, Malcolm Holcombe has once again given us a handful of songs that are testimony to the human spirit. In these songs, the old truths still hold. Love, the inner life, music, these are eternal verities and will outlast the trickery and chicanery of those who would turn us against each other. In these strange and troubled times, we need Holcombe’s witness as much as we ever have, and it is our good fortune to receive it.

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WELCOME

The original Isis Theatre was built in 1937 and screened its last film in 1957. We as a family have restored Isis and made this historic theatre into what is now Isis Music Hall. We hope to bring back what Isis was originally, a place that brought people together and entertained the community.